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. 2019 May 21;116(21):10317-10322.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116. Epub 2019 May 6.

Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Laurent Sagart  1 , Guillaume Jacques  1 , Yunfan Lai  2 , Robin J Ryder  3 , Valentin Thouzeau  3 , Simon J Greenhill  2   4 , Johann-Mattis List  5
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale, CNRS, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 75006 Paris, France.
  • 2 Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena 07743, Germany.
  • 3 Centre de Recherches en Mathématiques de la Décision, CNRS, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL University, 75775 Paris, France.
  • 4 Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
  • 5 Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena 07743, Germany; list@shh.mpg.de.

Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Laurent Sagart et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
. 2019 May 21;116(21):10317-10322.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116. Epub 2019 May 6.

Authors

Laurent Sagart  1 , Guillaume Jacques  1 , Yunfan Lai  2 , Robin J Ryder  3 , Valentin Thouzeau  3 , Simon J Greenhill  2   4 , Johann-Mattis List  5

Affiliations

  • 1 Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale, CNRS, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 75006 Paris, France.
  • 2 Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena 07743, Germany.
  • 3 Centre de Recherches en Mathématiques de la Décision, CNRS, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL University, 75775 Paris, France.
  • 4 Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
  • 5 Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena 07743, Germany; list@shh.mpg.de.

Abstract

The Sino-Tibetan language family is one of the world's largest and most prominent families, spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people. Despite the importance of the Sino-Tibetan languages, their prehistory remains controversial, with ongoing debate about when and where they originated. To shed light on this debate we develop a database of comparative linguistic data, and apply the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates. We then use phylogenetic methods to infer the relationships among these languages and estimate the age of their origin and homeland. Our findings point to Sino-Tibetan originating with north Chinese millet farmers around 7200 B.P. and suggest a link to the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.

Keywords: East Asia; Sino-Tibetan languages; computer-assisted language comparison; human prehistory; peopling.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Languages in our sample, contrasted…

Fig. 1.

Languages in our sample, contrasted with ancient sites reflecting early stages of domestication…

Fig. 1.
Languages in our sample, contrasted with ancient sites reflecting early stages of domestication and the estimated spread of non-Sinitic languages (see Homeland, Archaeology, and Agriculture). Ancient language locations reflect supposed political and cultural epicenters of the varieties.
Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

The Maximum Clade Credibility tree…

Fig. 2.

The Maximum Clade Credibility tree from the best-fitting model (relaxed clock with covarion).…

Fig. 2.
The Maximum Clade Credibility tree from the best-fitting model (relaxed clock with covarion). Branches with less than 0.8 posterior probability are dashed; other branches have posterior probabilities >0.8. For densitrees of the data, see SI Appendix, section 4.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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